Home Rich: Increasing the Value of the Biggest Investment of Your Life » (Unabridged)

Gerri Willis is the anchor of CNN’s weekend business program Open House, which provides how-to essentials on all things real estate. She is also the personal finance editor for CNN Business News and offers viewers worldwide financial advice in her daily “Five Tips” segment. Prior to joining CNN, she was the senior financial correspondent for SmartMoney magazine and a 1992 Columbia University Knight-Bagehot fellow. She is also the author of The SmartMoney Guide to Real Estate Investing.

Your home is the single most valuable thing you can own, yet making it pay can intimidate and confuse even the savviest investor. Now, in an indispensable new book, finance expert Gerri Willis leads you step-by-step through the entire experience of buying, maintaining, and selling a home, and shows you how to come out ahead–maybe even way ahead.

Americans used to raise their families in one place, knowing that their homes would someday make them wealthy. These days, on average, people spend just nine years in a house; it’s become a medium-term investment in a volatile real estate market. Home Rich is the first book that offers simple rules specifically designed for this brave new world of home buying and selling. Here are the ways to maximize your profit, from the time you get the keys to the time you hand them over.

• before you buy: Learn about the best and safest loans available, how to finance and refinance them, and how to pick the right real estate agent (watch out for the “dual agency,” when one agent represents both buyer and seller).
• buy right: Understand what size home you need and can afford (it’s the features and the fit, not the square footage), and check out location, location, location (a school system is a tip-off to a growing neighborhood).
• keep up your investment: Make a checklist by season to determine maintenance expenses and find out how to protect against monster storms, mold, and vermin.
• upgrade in ways that count: Be practical (an updated kitchen beats a Jacuzzi), discover the new green improvements, and plant the best trees and shrubs for your zone (landscaping can add 6 to 7 percent to the value of a home).
• sell right: Inspect and repair, clear and clean, then set the correct price, advertise, and field the offers.

Home Rich addresses the needs of homeowners in all regions and at all income levels, featuring helpful case histories, practical charts, and clear instructions. Gerri Willis has written a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide for creating a special personal space that you will love living in–and that others will also value and happily pay for when the time comes for you to sell.

Publishers Weekly

Written by the anchor of Open House, CNN's weekly half-hour real estate show, this book is like having a good friend on call to answer all of a first-time home buyer's questions about the process. Willis covers questions you might be embarrassed to ask: "How much house can I afford?" or "What kinds of maintenance do I need to do to my home each season?" Divided into four sections-"Buying, Maintaining, Upgrading, and Selling"-this book walks the reader through the whole process, from providing formulas to calculate an affordable mortgage to landscaping. (Willis provides tables that list names of shrubs and their growing regions.) Bold headers allow the reader to dip in to each section as needed. With a straightforward style and concrete advice-Willis doesn't just tell you that you should interview your real estate agent or general contractor; she lists the questions you should ask-this book will help those who are completely new to the housing market approach the field with confidence. (Feb. 26)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Preface     ix
The Rules     3
Buying
How Much House Can You Afford?     19
Assessing the Market     28
Picking a Real Estate Agent     32
Choosing a Mortgage Lender     40
Avoiding Mortgage Fraud     47
Narrowing Your Search     51
Finding the Right House     56
Choosing the Right Mortgage     63
Negotiating the Deal     76
Surviving the Closing     83
Maintaining
Managing Your Equity     93
Going Green     108
Curb Appeal: Your Yard and Garden     125
Maintaining Your Investment     147
Upgrading
Financing (and Paying for) Your Renovation     165
Small-Budget Improvements     178
Choosing and Managing a Contractor     189
Remodeling Projects That Pay Off for Any Budget     202
Selling
Choosing a Real Estate Agent or Going It Alone     217
Prepping Your Home for Sale     229
Setting the Right Price     237
Marketing Your Home and Negotiating an Offer     241
The Conclusion     251
Acknowledgments     257
Index     259